Verse 53: Side Paths

Verse Fifty-Three
If I have a little knowledge
Walking on the great Tao
I fear only to deviate from it
The great Tao is broad and plain
But people like the side paths

The courts are corrupt
The fields are barren
The warehouses are empty

Officials wear fineries
Carry sharp swords
Fill up on drinks and food
Acquire excessive wealth

This is called robbery
It is not the Tao!
~ Derek Lin translation ~

I really debated as to what title I would use for today's verse. Initially, I thought of using "Shortcuts", but decided that utilizing shortcuts usually means taking a side path away from the main one, so "Side Paths" it is.

It seems that we humans like the concept of diversion, even when it tends to lead to ill health, stress and pain. We're so consumed with outcomes that we too often look for ways to win praise or rewards without doing the necessary work such entails.

For example, in the early to mid portion of the twentieth century, ready-made foods became ubiquitous. Canned, frozen and freeze-dried foods or beverages appeal to us because we can serve a meal quickly without spending much time preparing it. "Gee mom, that tasted like a home-cooked meal!" the advertisers and pitchmen told us we would exclaim.

While these ready-made meals have come a long way (though a good deal of them still aren't very nutritious), at the outset, they tasted like crap! When I was a kid back in the 60s, a frozen Swanson's TV dinner tasted like heavily salted cardboard. Aah, but it was quick!!

Of course, the push to get Americans addicted to this nutritionally-questionable tripe was borne of the desire of many companies to enrich themselves at the expense of worker and consumer health. Who cares if producing and eating this muck will lead the faithful to increased heart disease, cancer and obesity? We need to make our millions and billions!

Sadly, this is the routine methodology of our economic system. The ultimate goal is to turn out products and services at the lowest cost possible to ensure the grandest profit. These profits turn into power and the people with the most power get the biggest say in how society is managed. It is a system that creates imbalance and disharmony at every turn.

As the authors of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Taoism see it,

Human hunger for wealth, position, and power is not in keeping with the great guiding process that sustains nature. This thing-lust and status-lust is instead a dangerous variety of reckless imbalance.

Ursula LeGuin expresses this same thought more succinctly when she writes, "So much for capitalism."

Who knows? Maybe this is what led me to philosophical Taoism, in the first place. As a long-time critic of our capitalist society, I've believed for decades that it is a system of inherent imbalance. The chasm between the haves and the have nots is so great that it destroys most of the vestiges of so-called American democracy. It stresses the desires of the individual over the needs of the community. It enriches a small minority on the backs and shoulders of the vast majority.

In essence, I don't see how a Taoist-based society could be a capitalist society. Hmm. Could that be why far too many Americans aren't interested in it?

This post is part of a series. For an introduction, go here.